Google is moving deeper into the world of the Internet of Things (IoT), announcing a new operating system -- Brillo -- as well as a communications layer at its Google I/O developer conference today.

Sundar Pichai, a senior vice president at Google, took the stage at the company's annual conference to talk about updates to the Android platform, like Android Auto and Android Wear. He then turned his attention to IoT and how Google plans to help users build their own smart homes.

"People are making connected devices like smart light bulbs," said Pichai. "But developers don't know how to target these experiences. And for users, it's really confusing to make it all work together."

Google, he said, plans to change that by building what Pichai called an end-to-end solution for these new smart ecosystems.

"Brillo is taken from Android, but we've taken the lower layers, the kernels, the core essential so it can run on devices with a minumum of footprints," said Pichai. "We've whittled it down."

To help Brillo communicate with users' devices, smartphones and the cloud, Google also unveiled Weave, a communication layer for IoT. "The Internet of Things can talk to each other. It's a common language," said Pichai. "That's what Weave will do."

Weave is going to be available cross platform, and Brillo is expected to be available as a developer preview in third quarter of this year.

Weave should be full stack ready by the fourth quarter.

This story, "At Google I/O, the Internet of Things gets a new OS" was originally published by
Computerworld.

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